


I Have Never Known Peace

by ADreamIsASoftPlaceToLand



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: ... eventually - Freeform, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Panic Attacks, a little bit of fluff eventually, a lot of self-hating language y'all, be aware of that going in, self-deprecation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-06-09 15:05:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19478386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ADreamIsASoftPlaceToLand/pseuds/ADreamIsASoftPlaceToLand
Summary: Three flowers, wrapped up in a beautiful bouquet. The thread that ties them together sometimes wears so thin it might snap, and they might fall apart.





	1. Unsew My Seams

**Author's Note:**

> series title from Hozier's "In a Week"  
> chapter title from Emmy Rossum's "Inside Out"

“Thank goodness there’s only one galavanting Knight in this house, I don’t know what I’d do if I had to patch up both of you boys all the time.” 

It’s an off-handed comment that she says mostly to tease Damien as she wraps his bleeding arm in gauze - he and Angelo had sparred a little too roughly, and Damien had ended up with a shallow gash down the length of his forearm. Really she should know better by now. As soon as the words leave her mouth she bites her tongue, watching as Damien flinches away from her and shrinks into himself a bit. 

She ties off the gauze at the base of his wrist, and then takes his hand and squeezes it gently. “But, hey, if I didn’t have you I’d barely have any patients left to treat! You keep me on my toes so I never get bored. And I’ve never had a patient that tells stories as good as yours.”

He doesn’t look up at her, but stares at their hands intertwined in his lap instead, so she leans forward and plants a kiss on his forehead. Then, she gently releases his hand and leaves him sitting on the kitchen table where he can sit and relax while she starts getting ready to cook dinner. As she moves through the kitchen gathering ingredients, he’s still quiet and staring down into his lap, so she talks. She begins to tell him about her day spent at the Keep with Arum, where they’re working on constructing a slightly more organized garden for her to grow herbs and plants for her remedies. 

She talks, hoping to keep him distracted and to pull him out of the spiral he’s falling into. But, it seems the more she talks, the more he shrinks into himself, getting smaller and smaller until he’s hunched over, bracing his elbows on his knees, staring at the ground below his feet. She breaks off her sentence abruptly when she notices, and walks over to him, stopping just as her hips brush against his knees. 

“Damien?” She puts a hand on his shoulder and nudges him slightly to get him to look up at her, but he remains motionless. “Damien, come on. Talk to me. What’s going on?”

She moves her hands to cup his cheeks and gently tilts his head up so she can see his face. She hears his breath hitch as she does, but he lets her hold his head, leaning slightly into her hand right hand and squeezing his eyes shut for a moment. Then he looks up, soft, brown doe eyes meeting hers, and they fill with tears. “My Rilla, I -”

His takes a shuddering breath and a tear spills over, falling down his cheek and onto her hand. She swipes it away with her thumb as he continues. “I truly cannot fathom why you keep me around.”

Rilla wants to interrupt him, wants to squash that ridiculous thought out of his head as soon as he speaks it, but she also knows that it won’t work. That she has to let him get this out, let him give a voice to the fears that overwhelm his mind. Because if they’re trapped in his mind he’ll never be free of them, but if she can get him to put them out into the world, she can try to take some of them away. Try to remove them and take them for her own, lifting just a little of the burden he feels off his shoulders. So she just listens, and he continues. 

“I am a bumbling, clumsy mess of a Knight. Constantly getting myself hurt and constantly giving you more work to do, more things to worry about. Then I go on and on about my injuries, with senseless worries that frustrate you and annoy you. And now you have Lord Arum” - she tries not to wince at the fact that he still uses the honorific on his name, she’s never understood his insistent need to do that - “and he’s so much more of a help to you. I can’t help you with your work. Your experiments. Sometimes I feel as though I am one of your experiments. Some… fragile, broken thing for you to mend and fix every once in a while, when you get bored. Lord Arum is… So much more suited to you. I am not worthy of either of you, your intelligence, your creativity. Lord Arum’s skill in battle, his mind for inventing and architecture. The way he maintains his Swamp and his Keep. Both of you are... truly spectacular beings and I just do not understand how either of you can stand to have such a pathetic excuse of a human in your company.” 

He pauses long enough to breathe, but his breaths come quick and shallow. Now that he’s stopped talking there is a palpable shift in the air. It’s like a switch has been flipped and suddenly he’s in a full blown panic. Rilla let’s go of his face and places both hands squarely on his shoulders. “Damien, you’ve got to slow down your breathing. You’re ok. Can you look at me for a moment?”

His eyes flick up to hers again, and he’s shaking like a leaf under her hands, but she stares at him with all the fire she can muster as she says, “Damien, I need you to understand that we love you. Arum and I both. We love you so much. You are fierce, loyal, protective of everyone you love and everything you believe in. You are tied for the title of Best Knight in the Second Citadel - and don’t tell Angelo this but I think you edge him out most days.”

She’s hoping this will get a smile out of him, but he only shakes his head and wrenches out of her grasp. He gasps in a breath and cries out, his voice rising until he’s practically yelling, “But you don’t need me! Both of you could go on without me and be perfectly fine!” 

She tries to take his hand, ready with more words to soothe him, to remind him that they chose this, all of them together, but before she can get a word out, he continues, and now he’s really yelling, possibly louder than she’s ever heard him. “I CANNOT DO THIS ANYMORE, RILLA! I cannot sit here and listen to you talk about your day with him. I cannot go on with my days knowing that the two of you are here, together, when it used to be us, just us, here together. You fell in love with Lord Arum, and I do not blame you for that, of course, but I cannot stand to see it any longer. I cannot stay here and be a… parasite to your relationship. I cannot stand to see your flames burning so bright together, a bonfire compared to my weak flame like a candle blown out in the gentlest of breezes. What you two have together is far better than anything I could give either of you. And so I give you the one last thing I can offer - I will leave you two alone, and will no longer stand in the way of the beautiful and glorious fire you have built together.”

Rilla feels something in her chest fracture, then. There is a part of her that wants to run away from this, to run away from the steel of his words as they bite into her very core. His words sting even more because there is a part of her that blames herself for this. Her stupid comment earlier, so easy for his mind to twist into a statement about how he is a burden to her. Her distraction tactic backfiring into her flaunting all the things she has with Arum that she doesn’t have with Damien. Stupid. She knows better. She knows better and she did it anyway. She’s known Damien for so long and she still can’t even manage to not hurt him. 

She recalls a time when she apologized to Damien, for making a mistake that came out on him. At the time, she thought they were ok. That the mistake didn’t hurt him permanently, just glanced off of him. Now she can see just how deep that mistake went. So deep that weeks later it’s still hurting him. It still hasn’t healed, and suddenly she’s not sure it ever will. 

But she has to try. Because if she can’t help him fight off the shadows in his mind then no one can. And she can’t accept that he has to deal with this turmoil constantly in his mind on his own. She can’t let him go through this suffering alone. She takes a step closer to him, so she’s standing in between his legs, and cups his face in her hands again. 

She hopes he can’t hear the unsteadiness in her voice as she looks at him and says, “Damien, that’s not fair. You are one of the biggest reasons this relationship works in the first place. I’ve loved you for so long that I wouldn’t know what to do if I lost it. Arum fell for you before he even met me, and yes, we did meet, and we did fall in love independently of you. But it was the fact that you loved him, too, that made me think it was possible for us to do this. Because I could never let you go, Damien. If you had made me choose, back then, I would’ve chosen you, because you were the only thing I’d ever known. But you didn’t make me choose. You chose us. You chose both of us. And that made me love you all the more. No matter what else happens with us, you are who I’m meant to spend my life with. You and the grumpy lizard who swept us off our feet. I love you more than life, Damien, I need you to know that. You have to know that. I’m not going to let you leave because I wouldn’t survive it. Arum wouldn’t survive it either. Our relationship wouldn’t work without you because our lives are so tangled up in each other. Yes, Arum and I have built something together. But we built it with you, too. You said our love burns so bright it’s like a bonfire. Fire can burn wood, but if you take away the fuel the flames will consume it too quickly and go out. You are a part of this fire, Damien. You keep us going, so you can’t just walk away from this. Please, please don’t leave us. Don’t leave me.”

There are tears streaking down his face now, and his breath hitches again and suddenly he’s just sobbing. She knows it’s over, then, as he breaks down. The panic is gone, and now his body is wracked with sobs and he’s still upset and in pain. But this she can fix. She steps forward and wraps him in a tight hug, his head resting on her chest. He clings to her as he comes down, sobbing and shaking and exhausted. She just holds him as tightly as she can, giving him something to hold onto and ground himself as he slowly crawls back out of the spiral that threatened to consume him. They stay like that until he’s stopped sniffling, and his breaths are measured and even. She lets him be the first one to pull away. 

She lets him be the first to speak. “Rilla, I - I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I didn’t mean what I said, and I’m sorry if what I said was… painful to you. Thank you for staying with me. Your words always calm me down, you always know just the thing that will help me when I know not how best to help myself, and as always I am forever grateful to you for that.” 

He finally manages a smile, and she smiles gently back at him. Doesn’t contradict him. Doesn’t remind him that it was her words that set off this spiral in the first place. Instead, she takes a step back from him and begins gathering up the ingredients she placed on the table next to him and says, “Think you could still manage to eat? I should probably finish making dinner, if we want to keep Arum happy. Speaking of which, do you mind going to get him? He should be out in the garden somewhere. I think he was going to see if any of the strawberries were ready to be picked.”

Damien blinks a few times and shakes his head, seeming to finally come back to himself fully as he pushes himself off the table. “O- Of course, my dear. I’ll be back in a moment.”

As he exits and the door swings shut behind him, Rilla puts the food down on the counter. She walks into the bedroom they share, and sits down on the bed that is not nearly large enough for three people, but that they’ve tolerated because they haven’t reached the real heat of the summer and they still enjoy cuddling in together. And she takes a deep breath that shudders through her chest. Chokes back the tears that are threatening to spill over. She takes a moment. Lets the unbearable urge to cry overwhelm her. Lets the tears fall as she sits there, clutching a pillow to her chest. Lets a few sobs rip out of her throat in anguished cries. 

She knew this was going to be difficult. It’s never been completely easy with Damien’s anxieties setting everything on constant edge. And sometimes it overwhelms her, too. Sometimes she can’t quite keep herself from falling over the edge with him, and this is just one of those times. But just like how she helped Damien crawl out of the pit of worry his mind had dug, she uses her love for him, her love for Arum, to pull herself out. 

She stands up, straightens her sari back over her shoulder, wipes the tears from her cheeks, and goes back to into the kitchen. She has work to do. Two hungry boys to feed. And she loves them, so she’s not going to fall apart. She’s not going to let them fall apart.


	2. Look Inside, If You Dare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arum is out in the garden picking strawberries when he hears it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from Emmy Rossum's "Inside Out"
> 
> not gonna lie I'm nervous about this one!! Hope y'all like more angst!

“But you don’t need me! Both of you could go on without me and be perfectly fine!” 

Arum is outside in the garden picking strawberries when he hears it. It startles him more than he’d like to admit. He’s a lizard with composure, thank you very much. But he’s also fairly sure that he’s never heard Damien yell before. Before he can process this, another yell comes, even louder than the first.

“I CANNOT DO THIS ANYMORE, RILLA!” Immediately, Arum is moving towards the door that will let him back into their hut, but he freezes outside it when he hears Damien’s voice continue, a little quieter than before, but still filled with a deep panic. There is a tension that crackles through the air, and Arum can smell the fear on Damien even this far off. 

He waits. He listens. Listens as Damien… berates himself. As he abuses himself with words that, were they coming from any other mouth, would have Arum on the attack with knives and claws and teeth. But these words are being spoken by his little knight. His little poet. And Arum is frozen in shock. Is this really what Damien thinks of himself? Is he really this uncomfortable… unhappy? With their relationship? With him? 

Arum stands outside the door, breathing heavily and standing motionless, trapped between wanting to run in and save Damien from this - from himself, from these words that are shredding him to pieces, and wanting to run away so he doesn’t have to listen to Damien’s diatribe anymore. Because he can’t stand it. He can’t stand the realization that Damien feels this way, that Damien hates himself so much and is in so much pain. 

He can’t stand to listen to Damien when he knows that he is the cause. He is the reason Damien feels this way. He was the one who swooped into Damien’s life armed with a knife and mission. All he needed to do was steal a scarf and destroy the Second Citadel. He did something much worse, in the end. He fell in love instead. He fell in love with a prattling knight, and later with a witty herbalist. He thought that what they had could work, that Damien was willing to try. But now, listening to Damien, he realizes just how much damage he’s done in making this choice. He never really stopped to consider what he was doing when he stepped into this couple’s lives. 

His heart clenches with the memory of the first time they had all been together, in the world of the monsters. “He’s… my fiancé,” Rilla had said. They were going to get married. They were committed to each other. They had a life together, a full, happy, and complete life without him. And now. Now he’s shattered that. Taken that dream and crushed it into dust. 

And now Damien says he’s going to leave them. Leave him and Rilla to take what Damien once dreamed for himself. And now Arum does move, stumbling away from the door of the hut and scrambling towards the edge of the woods behind their garden to lean against a tree. He’s somehow made Damien feel unloved, unwanted, and he's broken what he and Rilla had so much that Damien feels like he no longer has a place with them. With either of them. Arum cannot abide by this. He cannot let Damien hate himself and think himself unworthy of love. He cannot let this relationship be broken beyond repair. 

And so, Arum makes a decision. He makes a choice, the only one he sees to fix this. The only thing he can do to make sure that Damien stays. That he gets the chance to be happy. To have the life he deserves. With Rilla. Arum looks at their garden, the full basket of strawberries left forgotten on the ground, at their hut, from which he can still hear murmuring voices drifting on the evening breeze. Arum looks at the life he wanted to explore and discover and build, imagining the three of them happy and loving and warm, then tucks the image away for a rainy day. He takes a deep breath, pushing up off the tree and steadying himself, looking back at the hut one last time. Then, he walks away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come talk to me on tumblr @shorter-than-her-tbr-pile


	3. Do You Still Like What You're Seeing Now?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Damien walks out into the garden, only to find the basket filled with strawberries left alone in the middle of the walkway

Damien walks out into the garden, only to find the basket filled with strawberries left alone in the middle of the walkway. Where could Lord Arum have gone? And why? 

He gazes around the rest of the garden, looking for some sign of what might have drawn Arum away from his task. The garden seems undisturbed, but as he glances towards the woods he sees a flash of purple between the trees - the tail end of Arum’s cloak disappearing into the dim twilight of the woods. Confused, Damien turns and goes down the garden path that leads into the woods, following the lizard through the trees.

“Lord Arum!” Damien calls, a puzzled expression furrowing his brow as he follows Arum deeper into the woods behind Rilla’s garden. He still finds it difficult to address his lizard friend without the honorific, though Rilla gives him a skeptical look each time he does. Arum, in turn, usually calls him Sir Damien - when he’s not calling him Honeysuckle, that is. It’s a bit odd, but it’s something that’s become an unspoken arrangement between the two. 

Arum doesn’t respond and continues walking briskly away, though Damien thinks for a moment that he sees Arum’s steps falter, so he’s fairly sure the lizard heard him. Damien’s brow furrows and he picks up the pace, jogging to catch up to him. “Lord Arum!”

He’s only a few feet behind the lizard now, so Arum cannot pretend that he doesn’t hear Damien tramping towards him over twigs and leaves. Damien watches as Arum halts, his back still turned, his shoulders slumped in defeat. 

“Hello, Honeysuckle.” Arum’s words are quiet, and he does not turn to face Damien as he speaks. 

“Rilla has begun to make supper, and she sent me to retrieve you from the garden, yet you are wandering into the woods alone. Does something trouble you, my lily? Is there a threat to your Keep we must attend to?” Damien asks, worried. He’s come to be quite fond of the Keep in the recent weeks, and the thought of it being threatened fills him with an unexpected sense of dread. 

Arum does turn around then, and Damien can’t quite identify the emotion that flickers across his features. “No, little knight. Nothing you need to trouble yourself over. I was just… thinking about things.”

His frill ruffles and he raises his chin defiantly, and Damien can almost see Arum brace himself as he says, “I think it is time I return home.”

Damien blinks. “But, Lord Arum, surely the Keep can last one more night without you? You have only been here for a day, and Rilla and I were rather hoping you’d stay for a few days, since I am off duty and -”

“Honeysuckle,” Arum cuts him off sharply. “You misunderstand me. I believe it is time I return home to my Keep, where I belong. Permanently. I have overstayed my welcome here, and it is time we all stop pretending otherwise.”

“You - WHAT??” Damien’s mind races to process all of this, but only succeeds in becoming a jumbled mess. “My lily, surely you cannot be serious. You cannot just leave us like this. Surely you must know that you are loved and wanted and welcome here with us. What could ever have caused you to believe otherwise?” 

“I heard you, Honeysuckle,” Arum practically spits, the honey sweetness of the pet name turning bitter in the air. “In there. Prattling on to Rilla about how miserable you are. How you truly feel about this. About us.” 

And for the first time in his life, Damien is at a loss for words. What can he say to that? What must Arum think of him? Of course he wouldn’t want to continue their relationship now that… Now that he’s seen Damien’s weakness. But the way he speaks… Could it be that he - how could he possibly think that he is the problem? That he is responsible for Damien’s weakness. His vulnerability. His anxieties. 

He must fix this. He must set this straight. He cannot let this happen. “Lord Arum, had you stayed you would have heard Rilla’s responses - and my eventual realization that my ridiculous fears were just that. Ridiculous. I -”

Arum takes a step towards Damien, and the unbridled emotion in his face makes Damien’s mouth snap shut in shock. “Sir Damien, I do not care how ridiculous your feelings are! The very fact that you have them at all is enough to make my place in this relationship very clear.” 

“But, my lily, surely you understand -”

Arum snarls, “I understand, little poet, that I am a monster. And I will not stay here and be the monster that tears apart the two most beautiful blooms he has ever seen just because he has - feelings.” He practically spits the words, but the venom dies in the air. His shoulders slump, and his voice quiets, so low it is almost a whisper. “I will not let myself hurt you, Damien. I… cannot stay here if it means you get hurt in the process. I cannot stand by and watch you destroy yourself because you’re threatened by my presence in this relationship. I will not be responsible for that.” 

He pauses long enough to take a shaky breath before continuing. “Damien. I thought you were dying in there. I could smell the fear on you from outside in the garden. I could taste your panic in the air. You are a Knight of the Second Citadel. You fight in battle with a bravery unlike anything I have ever seen before, and yet in the face of… Me. And what I’ve done to your relationship with Rilla. I’ve never seen you like that before. I cannot abide by the fact that I’ve done that to you, Honeysuckle.”

Damien smiles ruefully and shakes his head, taking a step forward until he can grasp two of the lizard’s hands in his own. “And here, my Lord Arum, is where I must interject. You are not responsible for the… troubles my mind gives me. Perhaps you were the object of my anxieties in the moment but, they would have been present nonetheless. I… had hoped, perhaps foolishly, that that would be a side of me you would never have to see. At the very least, I suppose I would have hoped to have the chance to explain it to you before you witnessed it. I am terribly sorry that you had to see me like that, my lily. But you must understand that you are not the cause of my distress. My mind is… subject to such terror whether it has a cause or not. Were you not here, it would merely find another thing to worry over.”

Arum is staring at him, still confused, but not pulling away. Not running away. So Damien goes on, “I will not deny that this relationship has been perplexing to me. There are many aspects to it that all of us have yet to fully comprehend. But there is one thing I do understand.”

He rocks forward onto tip toes and presses a kiss to the edge of Arum’s jaw, just as he did after the battle at world’s end. “I want this, Lord Arum. I love Rilla, and I love you. I meant what I said then and I mean what I say now. I’ll stay. I’ll stay and I’ll fight for this. For us. Will you?”

Arum takes a breath, and then he leans down to press his forehead against Damien’s. “Little knight. Delicate little Honeysuckle. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Damien pulls away just far enough to look Arum in the eyes. “Then stay. Come back with me. Rilla is preparing a feast, and you did promise her strawberries.”

He continues to step back, tugging Arum along with him, smiling as sweetly as he knows how, trying to hide the terror he feels that this will not be enough. That Arum will leave them, retreating to his swamp to live a life alone.

Arum follows. Arum follows him back into the garden and they gather up the strawberries that they’ll help Rilla turn into pastries later. Arum follows him into their hut where Rilla will smile at them and they will eat the delicious feast she has prepared. Then Arum will follow him into the bedroom, where they will slip into bed and become a tangle of limbs and skin and scales. They might not have all the answers yet. Damien’s mind will still make him anxious and worried, Arum will still worry that he’s too sharp, too prickly and used to being alone to exist around these humans without hurting them, and Rilla will love them both even when she’s tired and frustrated and there’s a part of her that wishes things were different. They might not have all the answers, but they have one, one that tells them that, even if it’s hard, it is worth it. They love each other, and that is enough.

**Author's Note:**

> come talk to me on tumblr @shorter-than-her-tbr-pile


End file.
